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What we call "Rosh Hashanah" is actually called by the Torah "yom teruah" and "zichron teruah", there is no mention of the term "rosh hashannah". "Teruah" = a sound or action, the sound resulting from the action of blowing an instrument , without any other specificaiton of what is to be blown and why, or what is to be remembered.
So why do we blow shofar, and how is it connected to the themes which Tradition tells us is central to this holiday and period of the year, a period of "return" = re-connecting to God and "being sorry for having not fully kept the Torah this past year, and resolving to try to do better this upcoming year"?
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Of course the very brevity of the command, its complete obscurity, implies that the answers were well-known to those who received the Torah, in other words they themselves observed it and knew how to do so, and it is part of the Oral teachings from Moses which accompanies the written Torah contianing these words, passed on to us via Tradition
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However the written Torah itself gives a hint to the meaning of the phrase in its very wording: by calling it "a day of rememberance" the implication is that it must have been referring to an event that all had attended. ANd that was SInai, the giving of the Torah.
But the Torah is for all generations, and the special day of 'remeberance of blowing' is for Jews of all time. So what could there be that we ALL 'remember'!? The answer is that according to Tradition, all Jews were present at the giving of the Torah at Sinai, our souls were present! And so what happened there could be 'remembered' by all Jews of all time!' The answer of course is Sinai - according to Tradition,
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So it is a day of rememberance of an experience at Sinai, specifically "zichron teruah", ie involving the sound of an instrument being blown. But what 'sound of blowing' was there?
When we were at Sinai, according to the Torah's description, a shofar-sound prevailed.
And so this means that the event we all remember, and which involved the sound of an instrument being blown, refers to a shofar, and so the Torah is calling us to blow shofar on this holiday. '
Indeed: When we were at Sinai, according to the Torah's description we SAW the shofar sounds -a shofar which no-one was blowing!
Furthermore, there was no shofar, only a shofar SOUND.
So it follows that "a day of (the sound of) blowing" "a day of rememberance of (the sound of) blowing" is to evoke this experience.
[This might be why the blessing made beforehand is "to hear the sound of the shofar" rather than "to hear the shofar" or "to blow the shofar".]
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So when we hear the shofar we can try to reach inside ourselves and feel that indeed we were present at Sinai along with the souls of the entire Jewish People of all times into the distant future, the only event which can be 'remembered' by all Jews reading the Torah's command to observe a 'day of rememberance', a time-transcending conneciton to that event of the giving of the Torah, and feel inspired to keep the Torah in the coming year, perhaps 'improving' ourselves in character and thereby undergoing spiritual growth...
.
The theme of "Kingship": Traditionally, the theme of Rosh haShanah is "crowning God as king" (where "king" means "the one who commands a nation" and crowning the king means "we the nation accept that we will obey"). And I remember being in synagogue as a young boy trying to evoke a majestic experience (corresponding to 'coronation of God' by humanity and all of nature) while hearing the shofar, and thinking of the wilds, imagining I was in the woods, below craggy peaks where the rams scramble, hearing their horns blowing.
At some point after leaving childhood however I realized that this would be impossible - rams do NOT blow their horns. The horns are embedded on their heads - not near their mouths where it can be blown - and the horn is 'upside down' or backwards with the wide part attached to the head, the wrong direction for blowing. And as I understood clearly when participating in a shofar-making workshop, the horn is filled with organic matter rather than being hollow! So the sound of a shofar is actually NOT heard in nature!
.
[As the Torah describes, it was a sound we SAW, so in a way it is fitting that the sound was heard at sinai without anyone there blowing an actual shofar. And that it is a sound NOT heard in nature.]
.
At Sinai we experienced God as King, and we accepted the King's commandments, and experienced an intense closeness as well, and accepted upon ourselves the observance of all the Torah laws (na'aseh ve'nishma = we commit to do all that you command without conditioning it on what that will be, and after this committment we will listen to hear what it is that you are commanding, that we are already committed to) and this experience of the covenant at Sinai that we are to evoke on what the Torah calls "the day of remembrance of teruah/blowing" ="zichron teruah".
.
And we are gifted by God on this day - according to Jewish Tradition a Jewish holiday is not just a remebrance, it is a recurrence - God imbues into time the recurring energy of the holidays, in order to enable it to be accessed by us annually. So on Rosh Hashanah we are given the opportunity to evoke this soul-healing experience of Sinai when "hearing the sound of the shofar.
.
[Note: This connection between the shofar of Rosh Hashanah and the theme of Kingship and of the shofar at Sinai is hinted at in the prayer service where the passages about the experience of Sinai and "seeing the sounds of the shofar" are mentioned, all within the theme of "kabalat ol malchut shamayim" "accepting the Kingship of God". Kingship and shofar are the theme rather than teshuva/repentance, because at Sinai we acheived the right mix of awe/fear & closeness, in the acceptance then of God's Kingship and the obligation to keep the King's commandments.
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God's gift as reward to us, and God's joy: As described in this past shabbat's Torah portion and in many others, what God most wants is a close relationship with us, for us "to love ...and cleave unto God", and as written there, when we return to God, it is God's great joy (God returns to "sass" "joy" with us, as with our forefathers).
As reward for our saying "Na'aseh VeNishma" in ratifying the covenant with God at Sinai [ie a reward for us first committing to "we shall do" and only after committing, saying "we shall HEAR" that which we have already committed to do], rather than the reverse, making it conditional on what we hear] God gifted us with a day on which we can re-establish the closeness of that event by hearing the shofar - God re-creates the energy of that time on Rosh Hashanah - and our hearing the sound of the shofar with the right kavanah/inention can bring us to the point where we want to re-accept God's Kingship, and this brings along with it the teshuva (return/repentance) we spoke of: on Rosh haShanah, in that state of closeness and acceptance of God's 'Kingship', and while evoking the experience at Sinai via hearing the shofar, we can experience some of the energy of our state at the giving of the Torah and we naturally want to be close to God by keeping God's Torah, so this process both pulls us to "teshuva" and revives the Sinaitic closeness with God..
.
Although Rosh Hashanah is a serious solemn day for us - not so much a day of joy as most other Jewish Holidays - it is nevertheless a day on which there is great positive energy, the potential for reestablishing closeness with God via re-committment- and it is therefore a time of great joy for God!
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Conclusion: May we indeed be blessed to be able to indeed be able to concentrate when hearing the sound of the shofar, to evoke the experience at Sinai, to experience the oneness of the Jewish People at Sinai, to re-establish the committment to Torah, and to thereby bring about the re-establishment of the closeness to God that is so healing for us (and that brings joy to God our King)!
..
Shanah tovah (a 'good year') to all!
.
However the written Torah itself gives a hint to the meaning of the phrase in its very wording: by calling it "a day of rememberance" the implication is that it must have been referring to an event that all had attended. ANd that was SInai, the giving of the Torah.
But the Torah is for all generations, and the special day of 'remeberance of blowing' is for Jews of all time. So what could there be that we ALL 'remember'!? The answer is that according to Tradition, all Jews were present at the giving of the Torah at Sinai, our souls were present! And so what happened there could be 'remembered' by all Jews of all time!' The answer of course is Sinai - according to Tradition,
.
So it is a day of rememberance of an experience at Sinai, specifically "zichron teruah", ie involving the sound of an instrument being blown. But what 'sound of blowing' was there?
When we were at Sinai, according to the Torah's description, a shofar-sound prevailed.
And so this means that the event we all remember, and which involved the sound of an instrument being blown, refers to a shofar, and so the Torah is calling us to blow shofar on this holiday. '
Indeed: When we were at Sinai, according to the Torah's description we SAW the shofar sounds -a shofar which no-one was blowing!
Furthermore, there was no shofar, only a shofar SOUND.
So it follows that "a day of (the sound of) blowing" "a day of rememberance of (the sound of) blowing" is to evoke this experience.
[This might be why the blessing made beforehand is "to hear the sound of the shofar" rather than "to hear the shofar" or "to blow the shofar".]
.
So when we hear the shofar we can try to reach inside ourselves and feel that indeed we were present at Sinai along with the souls of the entire Jewish People of all times into the distant future, the only event which can be 'remembered' by all Jews reading the Torah's command to observe a 'day of rememberance', a time-transcending conneciton to that event of the giving of the Torah, and feel inspired to keep the Torah in the coming year, perhaps 'improving' ourselves in character and thereby undergoing spiritual growth...
.
The theme of "Kingship": Traditionally, the theme of Rosh haShanah is "crowning God as king" (where "king" means "the one who commands a nation" and crowning the king means "we the nation accept that we will obey"). And I remember being in synagogue as a young boy trying to evoke a majestic experience (corresponding to 'coronation of God' by humanity and all of nature) while hearing the shofar, and thinking of the wilds, imagining I was in the woods, below craggy peaks where the rams scramble, hearing their horns blowing.
At some point after leaving childhood however I realized that this would be impossible - rams do NOT blow their horns. The horns are embedded on their heads - not near their mouths where it can be blown - and the horn is 'upside down' or backwards with the wide part attached to the head, the wrong direction for blowing. And as I understood clearly when participating in a shofar-making workshop, the horn is filled with organic matter rather than being hollow! So the sound of a shofar is actually NOT heard in nature!
.
[As the Torah describes, it was a sound we SAW, so in a way it is fitting that the sound was heard at sinai without anyone there blowing an actual shofar. And that it is a sound NOT heard in nature.]
.
At Sinai we experienced God as King, and we accepted the King's commandments, and experienced an intense closeness as well, and accepted upon ourselves the observance of all the Torah laws (na'aseh ve'nishma = we commit to do all that you command without conditioning it on what that will be, and after this committment we will listen to hear what it is that you are commanding, that we are already committed to) and this experience of the covenant at Sinai that we are to evoke on what the Torah calls "the day of remembrance of teruah/blowing" ="zichron teruah".
.
And we are gifted by God on this day - according to Jewish Tradition a Jewish holiday is not just a remebrance, it is a recurrence - God imbues into time the recurring energy of the holidays, in order to enable it to be accessed by us annually. So on Rosh Hashanah we are given the opportunity to evoke this soul-healing experience of Sinai when "hearing the sound of the shofar.
.
[Note: This connection between the shofar of Rosh Hashanah and the theme of Kingship and of the shofar at Sinai is hinted at in the prayer service where the passages about the experience of Sinai and "seeing the sounds of the shofar" are mentioned, all within the theme of "kabalat ol malchut shamayim" "accepting the Kingship of God". Kingship and shofar are the theme rather than teshuva/repentance, because at Sinai we acheived the right mix of awe/fear & closeness, in the acceptance then of God's Kingship and the obligation to keep the King's commandments.
.
God's gift as reward to us, and God's joy: As described in this past shabbat's Torah portion and in many others, what God most wants is a close relationship with us, for us "to love ...and cleave unto God", and as written there, when we return to God, it is God's great joy (God returns to "sass" "joy" with us, as with our forefathers).
As reward for our saying "Na'aseh VeNishma" in ratifying the covenant with God at Sinai [ie a reward for us first committing to "we shall do" and only after committing, saying "we shall HEAR" that which we have already committed to do], rather than the reverse, making it conditional on what we hear] God gifted us with a day on which we can re-establish the closeness of that event by hearing the shofar - God re-creates the energy of that time on Rosh Hashanah - and our hearing the sound of the shofar with the right kavanah/inention can bring us to the point where we want to re-accept God's Kingship, and this brings along with it the teshuva (return/repentance) we spoke of: on Rosh haShanah, in that state of closeness and acceptance of God's 'Kingship', and while evoking the experience at Sinai via hearing the shofar, we can experience some of the energy of our state at the giving of the Torah and we naturally want to be close to God by keeping God's Torah, so this process both pulls us to "teshuva" and revives the Sinaitic closeness with God..
.
Although Rosh Hashanah is a serious solemn day for us - not so much a day of joy as most other Jewish Holidays - it is nevertheless a day on which there is great positive energy, the potential for reestablishing closeness with God via re-committment- and it is therefore a time of great joy for God!
.
Conclusion: May we indeed be blessed to be able to indeed be able to concentrate when hearing the sound of the shofar, to evoke the experience at Sinai, to experience the oneness of the Jewish People at Sinai, to re-establish the committment to Torah, and to thereby bring about the re-establishment of the closeness to God that is so healing for us (and that brings joy to God our King)!
..
Shanah tovah (a 'good year') to all!
...
The Torah mentions many times that we should love God, not just keep God's commands. so it is hinting at the deep relationship with us which is what God wants most, the closeness of "cleaving unto God" ("u'le'davka bo"), as mentioned at the very end of the portion we just read on shabbat. This is inspiration for why to pray on Rosh Hahshannah: in other words, part of our motivation and what underlies our feeling of remorse etc, is the distress at the distance we feel in our relationship with God. And what God seeks most of us is to return to our essence and re-establish the closest possible relationship.....
May we be blessed on Rosh Hashanah to have God's desire for closeness with us infuse us, inspire us to fully return.
Inclusing as outlined below:
We have a promise from the great Kabbalist Jeremiah the prophet (mekubal Yirmiyahu Hanavi), who wrote a 'commentary' on the Torah portion read on shabbat where God says God will take action to help us get closer to God, "umal es levavchem.." God "will open/unblock ('circumsize') your heart", and the Torah portion mentions the word 'reurn' 'shav' in various contexts many times within a few passaged, and Jeremiah (31:17) combines this repeated use of "shav", to form the request/prayer "hashiveni ve'ashuva.." "return me and I will return", ie asking God to help us return to God. (Jeremiah was the author of the Biblical Book of Lamentations where the same idea appears, in Chapter 5, but phrased for the collective rather than the individual: "Hashivenu ve'nashuva'). Since the book of Jeremiah is written in prophecy and is accepted as part of the prophetic books (Neviim) of tanach, it means that God endorses this, and so it is effectively transformed from Jeremiah's prophetic prayer to God's promise!
So to 'return' ("to do teshuva") we need only open up our hearts by a tiny crack - eg when our heart are covered over and we don't really want to change, then even just to wish that we would have wanted to return to God will be enough for God to start the process, which we can then continue.. so may we be blessed that even if all we can muster is just "feeling badly that we don't want teshuva enough to actually 'do it'" - this will suffice to activate God's reciprocation ("umal.."), and God will enter that tiny crack we opened and will open us up to want to return to God.
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There's an inspirational devotional poem & song expressing deep longing, written around the words "hashiveni ve'ashuva' return me and I will return", written by the great scholar rabbi mystic Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra hundreds of years ago, sung in various communities over the years and more recently put to music by Yair Gadasi, beautifully sung by various artists, eg this rendition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8Voa9DkM1M מילים: רבי אברהם אבן עזרא. לחן: יאיר גדסי Text: 12th-century rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra:
לך אלי תשוקתי, בך חשקי ואהבתי. לך ליבי וכליותי, לך רוחי ונשמתי.. השיבני ואשובה ותרצה את תשובתי ... לך אזעק בך אדבק עדי שובי לאדמתי, לך אני בעודי חי ואף כי אחרי מותי. השיבני ואשובה ותרצה את תשובתי ... לך ידי לך רגלי וממך היא תכונתי, לך עצמי לך דמי ועורי עם גויתי, השיבני ואשובה ותרצה את תשובתי
"To You my Lord, my passion/In You is my will and my love/To You my heart and kidneys/To You my soul and spirit/To You my hands, to You my feet/And from You is my character/To You myself, to You my blood return me and I will return, and you will desire my teshuva ('return')
[See the youtube renditions of other famous songs built around these words "hashiveni ve'ashuva"/Hashivenu ve'nashuva".
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Conclusion: God loves us and deeply desires that we love God in return, and this is the goal of all 'return' - may we be blessed to not be intitmidated by the task, that we undertake even the tiniest act of opening ourselves, the tiniest wistful wish that we could feel closeness, and thereby merit the widening of that crack, and to grow it up to a true connection.
Shanah tovah!!!
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2022?
A message for those who may have difficulty opening themselves up on Rosh Hashanah: or for whom a Day of Judgement is too psychologically heavy and are afraid to go to synagogue...
The Torah mentions many times that we should love God, not just keep God's commands. so it is hinting at the deep relationship with us which is what God wants most, the closeness of "cleaving unto God" ("u'le'davka bo") as mentioned at the very end of the portion.
This is inspiration for why to pray on Rosh Hahshannah, part of our motivation and what underlies our feeling of remorse etc is the distance this caused in our relationship, and what God seeks most of us is to return to our essence and re-establish the closest possible relationship..... may we be blessed on Rosh Hashanah to have God's desire for closeness with us infuse us, inspire us to fully return ...
We have a promise from the great Kabbalist Jeremiah the prophet (mekubal Yirmiyahu Hanavi), who wrote a 'commentary' on the Torah portion read on shabbat where God says God will take action to help us get closer to God, "umal es levavchem.." (I will open ('circumsize') your heart), and the Torah portion mentions the word 'reurn' 'shav' in various contexts many times within a few passaged, and Jeremiah (31:17) combines this repeated use of "shav", to form the request/prayer "hashiveni ve'ashuva.." "return me and I will return", ie asking God to help us return to God. (Jeremiah was the author of the Biblical Book of Lamentations where the same idea appears, in Chapter 5, but phrased for the collective rather than the individual: "Hashivenu ve'nashuva'). Since the book of Jeremiah is written in prophecy and is accepted as part of the prophetic books (Neviim) of tanach, it means that God endorses this, and so it is effectively transformed from Jeremiah's prophetic prayer to God's promise! [See the youtube renditions of various fmaous songs built around these words ("hashiveni ve'ashuva"/Hashivenu ve'nashuva") .]
So to 'return' ("to do teshuva") we need only open up our hearts by a tiny crack - eg when our heart are covered over and we don't really want to change, then even just to wish that we would have wanted to return to God will be enough for God to start the process, which we can then continue.. so may we be blessed that even if all we can muster is just "feeling badly that we don't want teshuva enough to actually 'do it'" - this will suffice to activate God's reciprocation ("umal.."), and God will enter that tiny crack we opened and will open us up to want to return to God.
God loves us and deeply desires that we love God in return, and this is the goal of all 'return' - may we be blessed to not be intitmidated, that we undertake even the tiniest act of opening oursilves, the tiniest wistful wish that we could feel closeness, and thereby merit the widneing of that crack, and to grow it up to a true connection. Shanah tova!!!
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Author
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On shabbos RH we read not dvarim parsha but בראשית פרק כא' פסוק א' עד פרק כב' פסוק כד'.
We can pray bizchus Avrohom bec he was willing to sacrifice all of us, and God let us live, so Avrohom's zchus kept us alove and now he is repsonsibl for us all through history, that's why the task asked of him was so huge....
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Says day of remebrance but sdoesn;t say of what!? Strange?! But actually Shabbat & all holiday reasonings are unclear: why rest if God did (shabbos)? Why these particular inuyim as explained by chazal. Why shofar? Why sit in succah if it is neve rmentioned and istn a big miracle? Why is matza to important, and why chametz? Why does Tradition make the iving of the Torah to be the essence of Shaviut when that is nt atall mentioned.]
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Also: it is in remembrance of the ayil which avraham brought instead of Yitschak:so it means that:
just as H tested Av & Y's INTENTIONS not their actual actions, ie their complete sincere willingness to do, so too we are only expectd to try, not to achieve, "lo alecha ham'lcha ligmor", so in looking at our past year we need not get stuck on how things turned out (as long as it was not in our control, and we were careful & rational in our planning etc)
like Yitschak was spared from the death sentence, that is what we ask on RH, so it is not just remebering Av's willingness to follow H's command, but also the effect of the ayil (like sa'ir la'zazel, which we DO mention explicitly on (on YK?) (in fact in slichos mentions a tfila by Y re not being killed! so it is not inappropriate to see it as being spared death as if it was a terrible death sentence for Y, ie if Y davened for it NOT to happen, so too WE can daven to be spared.Also: maybe we also are helped by Yitschok's tfilah itself!
Av was willing to sacrifice all of his descendants by shchita of Yitschok, so all of us forwever in all generations are alive only because H stopped his hand, so H has to forgive us otherwise why not jst let Avraham's hand fall, and if Av was willing to sacrificei it all, this gives the zchus of this act the power to give life-saving merit to all his descendants from Yitschok etc (and gerim of course0
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Note: An ayal's keren is to fight, to save it from death, yet in this case it was caught by them, this is some sort of message for us on RH?!
But why was the ayil preared for this beforehand - even from sheshes yemeh breishis!, whio not just ket Avraham find an ayil, make it easy to find one?
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Also: RH is not happy but the pasuk mentions sass, as in 'sasson'
See vorts for nitzavim RH is always this parsha?
for Rosh Hashanah, or teshuva process:,
thought of this while in Berlin: said to two rabbis there?:
it is appropriate that this is the week (in the parsha) that "H' does teshuva": ie , twice, after revii and later, pasuk says "veshavta" and then "veshav H'", either returning us to the land or to returning to us or returning to situaotn of "sass" as H' did over our forefathers.
Also: RH is not happy but the pasuk mentions sass, as in 'sasson'
Twice mentions that we should love H'. and "davek". so it is hinting at the deep relationship, and what H wants most which is the closeness. This is good for R"H.
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SHOFAR: Note that all the relevant psukim eg "roim et hakolot' are brought in malchios zichronos and shofros in shmoneh esreh, so chazal obviously had this idea in ind, so that means it is correct.
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It is a good teaching/learning experience to ask people what is meant by thekey word truah and zichron etc, and to show the method of looking other places in chumash where the words are used, eg using breisis bara as a prototype of this method, and then seeing that this is what chazal did in the shmoneh esreh, bringing all th psukim as definotion explanaton of the key terms.
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Why is Rosh hashanah "Yom Zikaron" a day of remembrance?
[The chagim are a way to keep klal yisrael connected, and also if this remez is correct it provides us with insight as to the meaning of the holiday.] 8:1-5: when BY will get to Israel, they should remember what happened in desert, and lists miracles. So how do we keep this mitzvah of 'remembering'? succos? Right afterwards it talks of the remozim to arba minim and then 'pen tishkach…batim tovim.." etc, so is remez to succos and other yomtovim.
Hint in this week's parsha to the holidays and to an essence of Rosh Hashanah and Succot, coming soon: MR says "Pen tishkach" and first of the list of remazin to the chagim is "remember" so that is RH, day of remembrance.
What remember? The experience of God taking care of us in the Desert, and the experience of seeing the sounds at Sinai...
NEW (collected on Feb 2017 from nyu emails), MESH THESE BELOW
Rosh Hashonoh and Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur: teshuva-related based on mayim kodmu and music; purpose of torah is to get us back to same as gan eden, we left but have etz hachayim; vayar vayera
Torah written without vowels, Vayera can be fear/awe or 'see': letters same.
Says lo tirah twice re war, bec God is with us so don’t fear, then fear god twice, which enforces the voweled reading of the letters as in 'awe, fear' not 'to see'. But in middle is re succos, yovel, hakhel says "layro’os panai", which can be both, and again re anan "vayera". So it has segued from one meaning to the other. This ties it into same theme, when see god’s presence (vayera) it induces awe (yirah).
How does one get to see Gods presence?
MR was anav, gave over in public the reins to Yehoshua, and this lowered ego state brought the shchinah, anan manifested, and this is lir’os panai which induces yirah, and in that state we need not be afraid of anything bec God is with us.
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Sh: to machlis. spoke at v end. YK parallel to G Eden
and then also re:
Yom Kippur: purpose is re-connecting, and kaparah is guaranteed, not like in world where people judge based on results achievement not effort, so if make the internal effort kaparah is guaranteed, hence it is called YK and is a day of joy.
then leading to succos, joy after YK reconnection (and the parsha[vayalech] mentions succos and annan)
People liked it.[ Afterwards, the (religiojs) guy who is very straight asked me to repeat outside where no noise and then he criticized every phrase so I gave up and walked away]
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add to:teshuva-related based on mayim kodmu and music; purpose of torah is to get us back to same as gan eden, we left but have etz hachayim: said at Machlis Oct/Nov 2015:
: mayim kodmu, tune vs w words, have to liberat the real essence, the tune, from the inpure song, so too:inside ourselves not to throw out the bad only the bad part of it; and the matsav, our quest is to eventually have yishmealand us both be what we shouldbr/.
Sh Oct/Nov 2015: Seudah shlishis at Brodt, he had told me there was a j for j couple and that maybe I should say something if they did, so I crafted a dvar torah designed for them and motioned to shulem and he inited me to speak (though they hadn’t said anything), it was good, people didn’t realize it was design to be anti misionary chrisitan:
Torah is etz hadaat : Humanity is god-forbid not cursed, we were taken out of the garden in order that we not eat from etz hachayim, not bec we ate from etz hada’at - God wanted us to eat from it!
Torah is etz hadaat, kruvim protecting “the way to etz hachayim” and on luchos in ark which is “derech hashem” “etz chayim hee”, ramchal conneciotn via torah then afterwards is dveykut, joy.
………
rosh hashanah vort: some said at machlis
zichron teruah:
god remembering means taking action at appropriate time.
we were in eden so that we'd always remember that this is what we strive to return to
in womb, torah taught and removed so that we'd know what we need to strive for, wha tis true torah, not be misled by false
har sina we heard anochi (or the aleph) and we thought we'd die, souls went out of ody, no kelim to contina the closeness and awesomeness of god.
we 'remember' that, in other words recreat ein ourselves the sens eof awe.
kol hashofar hoelch vechazek, but noone was blowing it, it was like roi;im et hakolot, and pasuk implies they saw the shofar sound! so zichron teruah is the recreating the sens eof awe, of HaMelech, at Sinai, which we can do since we were all at Sinai,
we were given there a conneciotn even if only momentarily, that is eternally ours, and therefore can be used to recreate the conneciotn.
.....
va'eschanan: 'pen...tishkach' so we have zichron etc: in previous section and this we see that god wants us to love him, cleave, be close, tests us to see if we love him, is 'meyaser' us as father does to son. so that is what it is all about, re-establishig the conneiotn to god.
(said at machlis on shabbos right before RH)
hashivenu ve'nashuva: all we need is to want to to teshuva, to come to shul and want it, and then god can come to intiaiate the contact which will enable us to reciprocate and get close.
.......……………..…………..
Yom Kippur vort: why adam/eve had children in the new post-eden reality;
YK and teshuva were invented after either egel hazahav or chet adam/chava. it makes sense that RH is re creation, and YK is re expulsion from eden.
adam/eve didn;t have parents, and when they ate, according to some readings the creation didn;t yet even have the concept of children. So there wa sno way for them to know that God is like 'avinu' and not just 'malkenu'. So they needed to be introduced to teshuva, and since the post-eden existenc ewould involve many stumbles and need for the belief in the possibility of return, it was necessary for them to have children, and then for all humanity afterwards to have parents who they know love them unconditionally and no matter wha tthey do, and to have children, so that they have confidence that if god is their father that he will inevitably accept their teshuva.
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why we pray when weak etc
We fast and get weak and pray for assistance as supplicants in that state, because this state is conducive to our placing all our eggs in the god basket, and the dependence on god is a form of trust, and closeness, and this is what god sdesires , our closeness, and to feel our trust that he will indeed forgive us, and it isn;t about forgiveness, it is about re-establishing the conneciotn, that is the purpose, there is no need for forgiveness, god is beyond needing us to ask for forgiveness, but god DOES want the closeness (and that is ultimately what WE want as well).
Just as when we are children and ask our parents for help without feeling resentful that we need to ask, or fearful that there will be a price, the same re god, and so we need to be in a vulnerable situaiotn to feel this...
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Ha'azinu/Vayelech
Psukim: In vayelech, God tells M"R and Yehoshua that the song (shira) should be written and placed in the mouths of people, so tha tthey could read it as an 'ed' (witness) in the future. When? Later, while in the land of Israel, they will whore after other gods and will leave god, ands o god will leave them and hide his face (azov, haster astir et panai), and then bad things will happen tot he people and they'll say it is bec God is not among them.
So ha'azinu is a means of bringing the straying Jewish people back to an awareness that God is still connected to them.
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Vort: It is interesting that this famous speech of 'haster astir' is said by God (and the word is used also in Ha'azinu [revi'i?] while there is the greatest manifestation of the divine presence, an anan on top of the entrance to the mishkan!
Drosho: Because the word 'znut' is used for straying, i used the term 'love poem' to describe ha'azinu, even though it is not about love - it is an expression of god's undying love for us that god prepared this poem for that day when the connection is seemingly irreparably broken.
This is true undying love - not a poem about love, but an act of love, preparing beforehand a fixing for the conneciotn in the itme when it semes impossible to fix.
It is close to succos time, and the anan represents the closeness of the shchinah during the midbar, and here it is somewhat similar.
Also: god promises us a week of closeness in the succah to compensate for and recreate the closeness in the midbar, in prep for hashanah rabbah, when we repair our connneciotn to God. So here too the anan is used in the context of to repair conneciotn
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drush said at machlis/brodt oct nov 2015
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To Machlis with Mommy for shiva call, especially to Malki/Jay. R Mordechai asked me to speak, I said my piece about kamtza bar-kamtza. (afterwards man sitting there said I had spoken very eloquently; when I asked Rabbi M afterwards who he is, he said his child met spouse at Machlis home, he spoke and she liked it and that was the start…!)
Sh
to machlis for whole meal; spoke in Hebrew only (very few English speakers, no tourists), I gave over Rabbi Brandwein’s deep connecting torah on Lech Lecha, to see the deeper level of events, also in our lives, when they seem inscrutable, meaningless, like the strange stories in the parsha.
Fri: Ate home, then to machlis, then home, then machlis, spoke. crowd much less than in summer but not sure if is the matzav, the season the weather, the death of henny.
Sh: To machlis, then to Brodt (m was still at lunch when I left for brodt!) Shulim asked me to speak! I spoke about Rivka as prophet proactive (he liked that) (I had spoken something similar at Machlis) and re name yisrael (since he had mentioned it)
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PASTED PHOTO: TEXT: http://maagarim.hebrew-academy.org.il/Pages/PMain.aspx?mishibbur=640000&mm15=000000013170%2000 פרקי רבי אליעזר Adam was afraid "כּי ערום אני ממעשׂ"
so maybe this is lo yitboshashu, ie in gan eden before the chet, there was no busha of nahma dekisufa, but afterwards there was.
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yom kippur, succos, yir'ah in parsha
To machlis, spoke, (he gave me a long build up that I can speak in a way that is interesting for people at didff levels and etc) spoke on parsha & YK. Says lo tirah twice re war, bec oGod is with us so don’t fear, then fear god twice, but in middle is re succos yovel hakhel says layro’os panai, and again re anan vayera, so this ties it into same theme, when see god’s presence it induces yirah, and how get there? MR was anav, gave over in public the reins to Yehoshua, and this lowered ego state brought the shcinah, anan manifested, and this is lir’os panai which induces yirah, and in that state we need not be afraid of anything bec God is with us.
Sh: to machlis. spoke at v end. on YK parallel to G Eden and then also re sucos joy after YK reconnection, purpose is reconeting, and kaparah is guaranteed, not like in world where people judge based on results achievemnt not effort, so if make the internal effort kaparah is guanranteed, hence it is called YK iand is a day of joy, then leading to succos (and the parsha[vayaech] mentions succos and annan) people liked it.[ Afterwards, the (religiojs) guy who is very straight asked me to repeat outside where no noise and then he criticized every phrase so I gave up and walked away]
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It is a good teaching/learning experience to ask people what is meant by the key word truah and zichron etc, and to show the method of looking other places in chumash where the words are used, eg using breishis bara as a prototype of this method, and then seeing that this is what chazal did in the shmoneh esreh, bringing all th psukim as definotion explanaton of the key terms.
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To give over the vort, start with logic riddle:
if RH is a "remembering", and it was said ot the people of israel in the desert, then there was plenty they shared experiences an remembered. But it is in the Torah fo all generaitons, so if what could it be that we all experienced ? Sounds impossible.
Answer: Sinai.
At sinai...sound of shofar..
Who blew the shofar at sinai?
Which shofar was used?
[Side riddle: iImagine you are in the mountain forests where rams live, and you occasionally hear the eerie sound of a shofar piercing the silence or chirping of birds and crickets, and then spot a ram at the top of a craggy peak highlighted by the moon...
What's wrong with this image?!
So a ram;s horn sound is NOT a "natural" one...
Video: This idea could be the plot of an interesting entertaining animation:
kid watching at Sinai seeing strange colors and visions, it is from the sound of the shofar,
he asks what the sound is they tell him "a ram's horn", he follows the sound to try to find where it is coming from, he is imagingn a huge shofar, a large ram on the mountain blowing its horn...
but he start thinking of rams and wondering how the sound comes out and realizes a ram cannot blow its own horn!
So he starts looking for a human, a great prophet blowing it, and eventually realizes there is noone blowing it, and then he realizes there is no shofar....
and we see the kid's soul and it is eternal and spread through the generations...
Then we see nowadays, someone with that soul, passing a sybagogue where the sound of the shofar is emerging from and the personis intrigued and follows it in and is overcome with the memory re-living sinai..
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All Jewish Holidays are a cyclic return of the original energy, in order to give us an opportunity to re-connect to that energy
we were in eden so that we'd always remember that this is what we strive to return to
in womb, torah taught and removed so that we'd know what we need to strive for, wha tis true torah, not be misled by false
har sina we heard anochi (or the aleph) and we thought we'd die, souls went out of ody, no kelim to contina the closeness and awesomeness of god.
we 'remember' that, in other words recreat ein ourselves the sens eof awe
. ...
kol hashofar hoelch vechazek, but noone was blowing it, it was like roi;im et hakolot, and pasuk
implies they saw the shofar sound! so zichron teruah is the recreating the sens eof awe, of HaMelech,
at Sinai, which we can do since we were all at Sinai,
we were given there a conneciotn even if only momentarily, that is eternally ours, and therefore can
be used to recreate the conneciotn.
.....
So when hearing the shofar we can try to re-live that experience, and re-accept the Torah, which then impacts the judgement. So H is giving us the way out of judgement, and in any case of course the goal is not judgement but re-conneciton, re-committment..
...
zichron teruah:god remembering means taking action at appropriate time.
How to maximally-benefit from the recurrent energy God imbued in this Holiday, via the special power of mindfulness while hearing the shofar
This holiday is called by the Torah "a remembrance of (shofar) blowing", without any other specificaiton of what it is about. So why do we blow shofar?
And there's no mention in the Torah of the "teshuva" ["return" ie to our true selves, our soul, to God "teshuva"] which we know from Tradition is the theme of this whole period - plus "crowning God as king" - so how does this idea of teshuva tie into the notion of a holiday of "rembrance of (shofar) blowing"?
I remember being in synagogue trying to evoke a majestic experience (corresponding to 'coronation of God' by humanity and all of nature) while hearing the shofar, and thinking of the wilds, imagining I was in the woods, below craggy peaks where the rams scramble, hearing their horns blowing. At some point however I realized that this would be impossible - rams do NOT blow their horns. The horns are embedded on their heads not near their mouths, and they are 'upside down' and filled with organic matter not hollow. So the sound of a shofar is NOT heard in nature!
The Torah gives a hint in the wording"a day of rememberance of (shofar) blowing" - since it is meant as a rememberance it must have been remebering an event all of us attended. But if it is a commandment for all generations, what event can that possibly be?
The answer of course is Sinai - according to Tradition the entire Jewish People into the distant future were all at Sinai! And when there, according to the Torah's description we SAW the shofar sounds -a shofar which no-one was blowing! Indeed there was no shofar, only the SOUND of the shofar
[This might be why the blessing made beforehand is "to hear the sound of the shofar" rather than "to hear the shofar" or "to blow the shofar".]
.
And as the Torah describes, it was a sound we SAW! [So in a way it is fitting that the sound was heard at sinai without anyone there blowing an actual shofar.]
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At Sinai we experienced God as King, and we accepted the King's commandments, and experienced an intense closeness as well, and it is this experience of the covenant at Sinai that we are to evoke on what the Torah calls "the day of remembrance of teruah/blowing" ="zichron teruah".
[By the way, the great sage Rav Sa'adya Gaon who died over a thousand years ago lists ten reasons for blowing shofar on Rosh Hashanah, and remembering Sinai is just one of these.]
According to Jewish Tradition a Jewish holiday is not just a remebrance, it is a recurrence - God imbues into time the recurring energy of the holidays, in order to enable it to be accessed by us annually. So on Rosh Hashanah we are given the opportunity to evoke this soul-healing experience of Sinai when "hearing the sound of the shofar.
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[Note: This connection between the shofar of Rosh Hashanah and the theme of Kingship and of the shofar at Sinai is hinted at in the prayer service where the passages about the experience of Sinai and "seeing the sounds of the shofar" are mentioned, all within the theme of "kabalat ol malchut shamayim" "accepting the Kingship of God". Kingship and shofar are the theme rather than teshuva/repentance, because at Sinai we acheived the right mix of awe/fear & closeness, in the acceptance then of God's Kingshiip and the obligation to keep the King's commandments.
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As described in this past shabbat's Torah portion and in many others, what God most wants is a close relationship with us, for us "to love ...and cleave unto God", and as written there, when we return to God, it is God's great joy.
As reward for saying "Na'aseh VeNishma ["we shall do and shall HEAR"] in ratifying the covenant with God at Sinai, God gifted us with a day on which we can re-establish the closeness of that event by HEARing the shofar - God re-creates the energy of that time on Rosh Hashanah - and our hearing the sound of the shofar with the right kavanah/inention can bring us to the point where we want to re-accept God's Kingship, which then enables the closeness with God to return. And this brings along with it the teshuva (return/repentance) we spoke of: in that state of closeness and acceptance of God's 'Kingship', and while experiencing the energy of the giving of the Torah, we naturally want to be close to God by keeping God's Torah.
Although Rosh Hashanah is a serious solemn day for us - not so much a day of joy as most other Jewish Holidays - it is neverheless a day on which there is great joy, for when we reestablish closeness with God - it is as mentioned above a time of great joy for God!
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May we be blessed to be able to indeed be able to concentrate when hearing the sound of the shofar, to evoke the experience at Sinai, and to bring about the re-establishment of the closeness to God that is so healing for us (and that brings joy to God our King)!
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Shanah tovah to all.
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(But the brcho and mitzva is LISHMO'A kol shofar, not to see it whihc we canot do, this in a way is remz to the "ro'im et hakolot'.)
So when hearing the shofar we can try to re-live that experience, and re-accept the Torah, which then impacts the judgement. So H is giving us the way out of judgement, and in any case of course the goal is not judgement but re-conneciton, re-committment..
.a'eschanan: 'pen...tishkach' so we have zichron etc: in previous section and this we see that god
wants us to love him, cleave, be close, tests us to see if we love him, is 'meyaser' us as father does
to son. so that is what it is all about, re-establishig the conneiotn to god.
(said at machlis on shabbos right before RH)
hashivenu ve'nashuva: all we need is to want to to teshuva, to come to shul and want it, and then
god can come to intiaiate the contact which will enable us to reciprocate and get clos
In tfilah and yaaleh vayavo and harachman the day is yom hazikaron. In chumash it is zichron truah etc.
.......
So what could it be that we all can 'remember'? On;y an event we were all at, ie sinai!
And there was 'kol hashofar holech vechazek",
World was created from the torah , and for the torah, so on its anniversary we remember our pact with god re keeping the torah, and we are judged based on that.
A) Why shofar on Rosh Hashanah and at the end of YK?
In tfilah and yaaleh vayavo and harachman the day is 'yom hazikaron'. In chumash it is 'yom truah' and 'zichron truah' (?) etc.
So what could it be that we all can 'remember'? On;y an event we were all at, ie sinai!
And there was 'kol hashofar holech vechazek",
World was created from the torah , and for the torah, so on its anniversary we remember our pact with god re keeping the torah, and we are judged based on that.
To remind us, to re-live it, to reinforce our will to return to H, we hear the same sound we heard then, the shofar.
(But the brcho and mitzva is LISHMO'A kol shofar, not to see it whihc we canot do, this in a way is remz to the "ro'im et hakolot'.)
Note that all the relevant psukim eg "roim et hakolot' are brought in malchios zichronos and shofros in shmoneh esreh, so chazal obviously had this idea in ind, so that means it is correct.
.......……………..…………......
vort for Rosh Hashanah: shofar reminds us of sinai, where we undertook to keep the mitzvos we are being judged about so it is 'zochron teruah' etc(ro'im et hakolot
(I have another vort re 'hishomer lecha pen tishkach" in list of yomtovim ie it refers to RH)
va'eschanan: 'pen...tishkach' so we have zichron etc: in previous section and htis we see that god wants us to love him cleave, be close, tests us to see if we love him, is 'meyaser' us as father does to son. so that is what it is all about, re-establishig the conneiotn to god.
....
..
RH: [ I had said this vort on a previous RH]:
1. shofar sound is not natural;
2. it was at sinai , but w/o anyone blowing a shofar!;
3 ithe sounds were seen etc.
We were there, so blowing shofar brings us back to the connectioion we experienced at sinai, etc., closeness to God. ,
We shold be zocheh it should happen.
Note that much of this connection re shofar is intended by chazal, it is implicitly made in the shmoneh esreh of musaf, series of psukim before olenu(?)
...
I remember realizing that a ram cannot 'blow its own horn'! It is NOT a sound heard in nature.
And at sinai, no-one was blowing it yet it was there! ie not natural.
And the people SAW it! so it was not natural.
re: YK (on shabbos shuva):
kol hashofar hoelch vechazek, but noone was blowing it, it was like roi;im et hakolot, maybe they saw the shofar sound! so zichron teruah is the recreating the sens eof awe, of HaMelech, at Sinai, which we can do since we were all at Sinai,
we were given there a conneciotn even if only momentarily, that is eternally ours, and therefore can be used to recreate the conneciotn.
..........
Above was said at machlis on shabbos right before RH.
hashivenu ve'nashuva: all we need is to want to to techuva, to come to shul and want it, and then god can come to intiaiate the contact which will enable us to reciprocate and get close.
.......
Background
https://www.yeshiva.co/midrash/7504 "In each b’rocha, we recite ten pesukim, three from Chumash, three from Kesuvim, three from Nevi’im and a concluding pasuk from Chumash. The ten pesukim recited in Malchiyos all reflect Hashem’s dominion, the ten of Zichronos all mention that He remembers and is concerned about what we do, and the ten of Shofaros all refer to the shofar.
As one reads the pesukim of Malchiyos, one should think, ‘With these words I coronate Hashem as King’. While reciting Zichronos one should acknowledge that all one’s deeds are recorded and reviewed by Hashem’s Beis Din (Yesod V’Shoresh Ha’Avodah). When reading the pesukim of Shofaros, one should think of all the wondrous events that happened in Jewish history that were punctuated by the blowing of the shofar, including Akeidas Yitzchok, Matan Torah, the conquest of Yericho.
We should yearn to hear the shofar blowing that will accompany the arrival of Moshiach as it says, ‘V’hayah b’yom ha’hu yitaka b’shofar gadol,’ ‘And it will be on that day that the great shofar will be sounded.’"
Q: where is "malchi'os" mentioned in chumash?
although there is no direct commandment in the Torah concerning Malchiyos, Zichronos and Shofaros, there is an indirect reference. Rashi (Bamidbar 10:10) derives a reference to Malchiyos, Zichronos and Shofaros from the pasuk, ‘And you shall blow the trumpets... and they will be for you a remembrance before your G-d, for I am Hashem, your G-d’. Such references are called ‘asmachta’, meaning that they are a hint in the pasuk, but not a Torah mitzvah."
The Rav proceeded to explain, "Many people errantly assume that ‘asmachta’ involves nothing more than using a pasuk to remember a ruling of Chazal. But the Ritva expains that this is not the case at all. Asmachta means Hashem wants us to perform this practice, although he did not command it. My Mashgiach, Rav Dovid Kronglas zt"l, used to explain the difference between asmachta and mitzvah in the following ways:
"A thirsty man wants his son to bring him a cup of water. There are two ways he can convey this message. He can either ask his son, ‘Please bring me a cup of water’ or he can tell him, "I am thirsty". In both instances the son knows that he should bring his father a cup of water. In the first instance the son was commanded to bring his father water, and in the second instance he was not. However, in both instances a decent person will bring the cup of water.
"Similarly, a mitzvah is like the first scenario described above, while an asmachta is like the second. The asmachta means that Hashem showed us in His Torah that He wants us to mention Malchiyos, Zichronos and Shofaros, and to internalize these messages. However, Hashem did not command us to do it. Chazal commanded us to recite these pesukim and prayers. Therefore, although one who recites the Musaf is technically fulfilling a mitzvah midabanan, he is carrying out Hashem’s desires."
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http://www.aishdas.org/midrash/5764/nitsavim.html
Nitsavim 5764
You stand this day before Hashem your G-d (Devarim 29,9).
The Zohar says that 'this day' refers to Rosh Hashana.[1] With this in mind, let us discuss how one stands in prayer before Hashem on this Day of Judgment.
Say before Me the verses of kingship in order to make me King over you (Rosh Hashana 16)
The liturgy of Rosha Hashana is unique in that it centers around the verses of Malchiyous (Kingships), Zikhronos (rememberances) and Shofaros (shofar blowing). Rosh Hashana 32a requires the Musaf prayer to be arranged around 10 verses that contain these concepts. Does it mean ten in total, divided in groups of three Mlachiyos, three Zikhronos, three Shafaros (and presumably a closing verse as well to complete the set of ten) or does it mean ten of each? R. Yehuda says three of each and R. Yosi requires that for each of the categories we must start with 3 verses from the Chumash, follow with three verses from Prophets and three from the Kesuvim and close with one again from the Torah. There is no great difficulty in finding appropriate verses for Zikhronos and Shofaros but there are only three such verses in Chumash for Malchiyous. We have no verse left to close the set of the ten of Malchiyos.
R. Yosi in Rosha Hashana 32b solves this difficulty by proposing that the Shema is also a verse of Malchiyous and that we close with it; R. Yehuda objects that Shema is not a verse of Malchiyos at all (as it does not contain within it an idea of Kingship)..
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